After a string of high-profile and embarrassing battlefield losses, questions have been raised about how long military chief Min Aung Hlaing can survive Blow for Myanmar’s military as rebels say hundreds have surrendered at key border town Myanmar’s military junta is on the brink of losing control of a major trading town, Myawaddy, on its eastern border with Thailand, after soldiers defending the position surrendered in recent days, according to opposition groups. This is the latest in a series of defeats for the junta, which has also lost crucial territory along its border with China and In ..read more

Former Australian foreign minister named as secretary general António Guterres’ special envoy to country gripped by civil war The former Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop has been appointed the United Nations secretary general António Guterres’ special envoy on Myanmar, the world body has said. Bishop, the Australian National University’s chancellor, will take up the UN role that has been vacant since June last year, when Singaporean diplomat Noeleen Heyzer stepped down ..read more

National Unity Government said it attacked two military targets in junta-controlled Naypidaw Opponents of Myanmar’s military said they had carried out drone attacks against junta sites in the capital, Naypyidaw, in what appears to be a rare incursion against the embattled junta’s centre of power. The National Unity Government (NUG), which was formed to oppose the 2021 coup, said it had launched drone attacks on two military targets in the capital ..read more

In 2017, a crying Asom Khan became the face of Myanmar’s refugees. Now 15, he has discovered his own passion for photography His own sign language of sweeping, dramatised gestures is rarely fully understood by those outside Asom Khan’s closest friends and family but the 15-year-old is able to speak through his art and photography. From his shelter in the Rohingya refugee camps of south-east Bangladesh, Khan takes photos to share the stories of his community – of his elderly neighbours, disabled people, and of women at work and in times of crisis ..read more

Soaked survivors clung to hull overnight before being taken to safety by Indonesian rescue team Dozens of Rohingya refugees have been rescued from the Indian Ocean off the coast of Indonesia after spending the night balanced on the hull of their overturned boat. Seventy-five people were pulled from the stricken vessel, which was spotted on Thursday by an Indonesian search and rescue ship ..read more

Home being sold after supreme court ruling in dispute with Aung San Suu Kyi’s estranged brother, with the price reportedly set at tens of millions of dollars No bidders have appeared at an auction in Myanmar for the sale of the home of jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, for which the starting price was reported to be in the tens of millions of dollars. The family property on Yangon’s Inye Lake was up for auction by order of the supreme court, after a years-long legal battle between Aung San Suu Kyi, who was ousted in a 2021 coup, and her estranged brother Aung San Oo ..read more

Faint hope of return for Rohingya people. Plus: a journey through Ukraine • Get the Guardian Weekly magazine delivered to your home address It was August 2017 when the world really started to take note of Myanmar’s Rohingya people. Descendants of Arab Muslims who speak a different language to most other people in Myanmar, the Rohingya had up to that point lived mainly in the northern Rakhine state, coexisting uneasily alongside the majority Buddhist population. But the Rohingya were reviled by many as illegal immigrants and treated by the then government as stateless people. In 2017, when viol ..read more

People trapped in the world’s largest refugee camp hope to seek new lives elsewhere despite threats facing them as they attempt to leave Bangladesh Even as dehydration was getting to their passengers, the traffickers using boats to carry hundreds of Rohingya away from refugee camps in Bangladesh thrust phones into their hands and demanded they ask their relatives for money. It was only after 28-year-old Rehana Begum’s relatives had paid almost £2,000 to the traffickers that they agreed to continue their journey, but a few days later, still onboard the boat, she fell unconscious and later died ..read more

One potential conscript describes how fear has gripped Yangon as people try to flee ahead of a law imposed by a hated junta The interviewee, 27, lives with his wife and 15-month-old son in an industrial area of Yangon. Until last month he was working in a garment factory. He is among the millions of people who could be conscripted under a law due to be enforced in mid-April by the military junta. He, like many across the country, is desperately searching for a way to escape. The military, which is fighting against anti-coup groups, is widely opposed by the public and has been accused of war cr ..read more

Never before have unmanned aerial vehicles been used so intensely in conflict, with even commercial devices enlisted in battle Three days into his presidency, Barack Obama ordered his first drone strikes. Over the next eight years, he oversaw a massive expansion of the US programme of targeted killings using armed drones. The initial appeal was that the US did not risk its personnel, and strikes could be carried out without attracting much attention and, supposedly, with more precision – though civilian deaths were ignored or played down. But in the ensuing years, drone wars have undergone a d ..read more